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The power of communication, the success of the iCity Project

Having a good project is basic in order to get people believe in it, implicate and participate. And when the aim of this project is to change, at least a little bit, the world where we live in, people participation becomes imperative. This is exactly the position where the iCity Project was when it started 5 years ago. At that time there were a big handicap, people didn’t understand what we were doing, what was our goal or why were we doing what we did.

For a project that counts on cities, developers, managers and citizens’ participation in order to develop itself, this lack of understanding was more than an issue. That is why the partners decided to rethink the way they were explaining things and a new communication was born. This time, in order to make sure the message was clear and well received, we adapted the dissemination plan’s strategy and implementation. Today the iCity Project can proudly say that according to monitoring results the challenge has been achieved.

A motivated and engaged community

Getting stakeholders, partners, cities and developers involved has been the key for success and we are satisfied to see that once we got our speech clear, they reacted positively to the project’s initiatives. In this sense is obliged to remember that the iCity Camp and the City Contest were two of the project’s events with the most acceptance and participation.

During the iCity Camp and iCity Contest’s campaigns Google Analytics would draw nice picks of visitors and Twitter, the main social media network used by the project, not only gained followers but also generated conversations.

Nowadays, more than one thousand people follow iCity Project’s news on Twitter, about 300 on Facebook and there are about 600 subscribers to the newsletter.

LinkedIn is also a great forum of discussions and followers. There is a specific group with more than 260 members creating conversations regarding the iCityProject and smart cities that has been a good traffic source for the main website. And last but not least, it is important to appreciate the collaboration not only of the online followers but also media like El Periodico, la Reppublica or Murcia Economia that have broadcasted iCity Project’s activity. Partners like SEAT have been also a key strategic piece that have helped the iCity Project to reach the goals marked four years ago.